SBaxter (Scott) & I have just finished an epic game - it was our 4th in a row - the first 3 all went with the TE winning decisively - 2 to him, 1 to me, so this was again my turn to play the CP.

A simple synopsis - I went for "Russia 1st" - and Scott went for a big Russian push into East Prussia.

At one stage we had cut each other off - the Austrians & Germans had met at Warsaw, & the Russians had reached the Baltic west of Danzig!!

However the CP had better troops & I was able to maintain the pocket and he was no, so a massive part of the pre-war Russian army eventually surrendered - I think it took 3 or 4 moves for all of them to disappear - it was a big pocket!!

then the CP proceeded to take 6 or 7 Russian food hexes, and I think the Revolution came in 1915 and the Russians surrendered by 1916.

Italy entered on schedule, and with help was able to defeat the initial CP attacks - even pushing back into the Alps, but after a year or so they found themselves without as much support as they needed, the CP smashed through their lines, captured Genoa & Florence & thye were out by early 1917.

With the surrender of Russia the CP stationed forces around Romania & smashed it in a couple of turns for it's food and resources.

The British tried invading Gallipoli and did gain a foothold, but met with enough resistance to make it not worthwhile and pulled out.

On the Western Front the French and British had launched multiple human wave attacks throughout all this - casualties were horrendous and gains non-existant.

With no other fronts but the Americans about to arrive, France eventually invaded Luxembourg, rapidly followed by Germany invading Belgium - there was a fairly quick stalemate - despite both the UK and France being demoralised they had no shortage of troops (yet), and a few US Corps were appearing.

For the rest of the game the massive TE advantage in production slowly pushed the CP back - the TE invaded Holland, which held out for over a turn IIRC.

The French were completely out of manpower - their units were often only at 4 or 6 points. The Brits seemed to have plenty of manpower, but both countries were exhausted with most of their troops "E" class. However with ample production they had plenty of aircraft and artillery, and got assault troops before me - although I had also wasted points on tanks :(

So at the end Austria and the Ottomans still had "excellent" morale and plenty of manpower, as did Bulgaria. Germany was initially demoralised only at the end of 1918, but suffered another level during 1919 and only ran out of its manpower "stockpile" only on the very last strategic turn.

At sea it appears the unlimited U-boat campaign & occasional cruiser raiders achieved little except disrupting a few amphibious operations, as did well timed sorties by the Austrian and Turkish fleets in the Eastern Med. The Kriegsmarine did manage to seize control of the Nth Sea a few times too.

I don't know if any TE warships were sunk other than 1 DD Scott mentioned - the Turkish cruiser was the only CP naval casualty other than 3 or 4 u-boats.

My setup was flawed by having the Russians too far west in Poland. As Mike points out, the Germans, with stronger corps, were able to keep me from cutting them off in East Prussia with disastrous results for the Russian army. It was downhill from there for the Russians.

In the previous game, I encouraged the Italians to enter the war early but was not prepared to assist them and Mike wiped them out pretty quickly. In this game, I did nothing to encourage their entry and, once they did show up, moved British and French troops in to stop the evil hordes of Huns and Hungarians from flooding the Po Valley. The Italians held out for two years rather than a few months. TE troops did manage to push into the Alps, but weak supply and heavy CP bombardments made the positions untenable. The German corps in Trent appeared to be invulnerable. I eventually gave up and sought an alternative way into Germany, via Luxembourg, in January 1917. The nice thing about declaring war on the Duchy is that no one gives a hoot.

Most of the TE troops pulled out of Italy with survivors of the aborted Gallipoli campaign moving in to protect Venice. CP attacked Belgium in March but made little headway, thanks to a suicidal attack by a Belgian corps that delayed his attack on Liege. While he did succeed in taking a few Belgian hexes, it was temporary and he was pushed back out. Brave little Belgium held on to the bitter end, even raising another infantry corps (although I am not sure it ever made it into combat). Mike's position on the Western front was strong enough, though, to prevent me from making significant gains and he swept into Italy. The British defenders in Venice were demoralized and, right before the Italians tossed in the towel, I evacuated them, but I had only Athens as a place to send them. I had the idea that they could move up through Greece with the help of cav and, eventually, retake Salonika, but that turned out to be a flawed plan -- Greece, without Salonika, had no rail and the cav that moved to Athens was stuck there, surrounded by rough terrain.

Mike mentions wasting points on tanks but did not elaborate. From my perspective, I saw two tank units show up in Italy. The Italians launched one of their rare offensives and POOF! both tank corps vanished. Seems they are quite weak, at least at the first tech level. Another tank unit showed up later in NW Germany and survived one of my attacks, IIRC, but not a second. I don't recall seeing the tank units ever being in an attack where they may have been helpful to the CP.

As Britain and France ran out of manpower, I found myself in the unenviable position of having lots and lots of economic points but unable to buy much of value except airpower. At one point, I think I had something like 77 air points vs CP's 34.

The US had beaucoup manpower and a treasury with very deep pockets but it could not build more infantry units.

French readiness suffered greatly. Look below at the units. Some of those had not seen combat for a few turns, but still had readiness levels of zero or one.

In Turkey, Mike succeeded in stopping me from taking Constantinople and even from interdicting the Berlin-Baghdad railway. German troops arrived on the scene and I made the decision to evacuate before being wiped out. I succeeded and gave the ship supplying the port a new mission. The Turks took control of the port without having to launch an offensive, but Mike never moved troops in. As a result, I found that I could move my forces back in without using an offensive. Gallipoli was listed as an available port as a destination for ordinary amphibious movement. I did take advantage of this at one point, but was dissapointed to find CP units stacked quite high around the city. I left and CP moved in at some point later.

I was totally unconcerned about Egypt once I had launched the attack on Gallipoli (and gotten the 1st Indian Corps out of India) and made no effort to defend the place when Austrians swept out of Palestine and across the Sinai. This was a mistake for two reasons. First, the loss of Cairo and Alexandria cost British morale twelve points. Second, I lost the potential of two raw materials per turn. I had deliberately not sent transports on shipping missions to the Eastern Med, figuring that I would get more than I could use from Atlantic trade. This is true at the beginning of the game, when the British economy is not very efficient but once it gets to the maximum in 1917, I could have used those two points.

To my everlasting chagrin, Mike accidentally set TE to have an advantage in production AND I still lost! I did not notice that I was getting more production than I should have...easy beat I am.

Re-reading the post about my attack on Holland (no neutrals left to be outraged, except for Albania and I declared war on them, too, eventually) reminded me of one aspect of this game that seems to be built in...

Defenders of a capital will not retreat, no matter how badly they are beaten. All of them must be killed off for the capital to fall. I have seen this multiple times -- Belgrade, Paris, Bucharest and Rotterdam (only city there so it becomes the default capital).